Breastfeeding

Okay,
We have A LOT of family & friends who are expecting. Some, any day now. So I thought I would share, in more detail, my experience with breastfeeding, to encourage and inform those who have been thinking about it.

BREASTFEEDING IS HARD.

I was so naive.
I thought it would hurt when the baby would latch on and for about 2 weeks and then it was smooth sailing.

I am here to tell you that I went through 10 & 1/2 hours of NATURAL labor and would rather do that again then my 1st 2 weeks of breastfeeding.

BUT...
In the end, I prevailed. You can learn from my mistakes.


I wanted sleep. I wanted it bad. When Joey would sleep, I wouldn't wake her up to nurse. I know, I know, they tell you to wake them up every 2 hours during the day & every 3 hours at night to nurse in the beginning to establish good milk production. Well, that is where I made my first mistake.

Then, it hurt. I mean bad. Remember, natural labor here, and this hurt. The thing is, you don't know how much pain is "normal" and what constitutes a problem. It is supposed to hurt when your baby latches on and then be okay while she/he nurses. And then your nipples toughen up and then it doesn't hurt during latch on anymore. For me, it hurt during latch on, and for the whole time she ate. Someone suggested I might have THRUSH, but I was told that the main sign of THRUSH is white in or around the baby's mouth or on your nipple (THRUSH is a yeast infection of the breast). Neither Joey nor I had white.

Well I couldn't make enough for Joey and she wasn't gaining back her birth weight quiet as fast as she should have and the doctor recommended that we supplement. So we did. And she had no problems eating from a bottle or my breast and back again. This is when I started to pump every other feeding, just to give my breasts a break from her mouth, but without losing production. My nipples cracked and scabbed and one day after that, when she tried to latch on, I nearly hurt her jabbing my finger into her mouth as quick as I could to break the suction. That was it, I was done putting her to the breast. I would pump exclusively, and feed it to her in a bottle.

I pumped every 2 hours during the day. I actually increased milk production. She only needed one formula bottle a day, which I gave to her before bed, because it helped her to sleep longer.

Then, on an overnight stay in the Keys House, I ran out of power on the pump and had forgotten the charger. I hadn't breastfed in a couple of weeks and my nipples had healed so I thought, we can do this for a day. Well, it didn't hurt. And it didn't start hurting again. We have been breast feeding since.

The past 4 months have been wonderful because she was so easy to feed. I could breastfeed her, give her a bottle of formula, or give her a bottle of pumped breast milk, she didn't care. And that left me with possibilities when someone was watching her or when we were out. This flexibility came in real handy when we took a 2 week driving vacation, when I left her to go to Disney for a weekend, or even just when I went to work on a Saturday and left her with her daddy.
She was still getting all the benefits of being breastfed, with all the convenience of both breast & bottle.

I started to drop in production a couple of weeks ago, without changing anything in our routine. I took that as a sign that it was time to start to wean her (that, and the gumming of my nipples). That is going very smoothly, since she was already accustomed to the bottle.

Summary:
1) With the next child, I will try to breast feed exclusively in the beginning to establish a very good supply.
2) I will go see a lactation consultant if I have serious problems with the pain again.
3) Once breastfeeding (in several positions) is firmly established, I will pump and put it into a bottle so that the next baby will take either breast or bottle as well.
4) I will introduce a formula bottle here or there, just in case, so when Mommy can't be around and pumped milk isn't available, it isn't the end of the world.
5) I will probably wean my next child at 6 months as well. I know the AMA recommends for a year, but this is what works for me. It should allow me to wean him or her before the teeth are really in. It also lets me get back on birth control, which will make the hubby MUCH happier.

By the way, going on 6 months and still no period. (Yes, I am taking pregnancy tests regularly, like you are supposed to, and no, I'm not pregnant.) That is another wonderful benifit of breastfeeding.